Stone me ...it’s the Southern Lights!
Glorious Arctic display pays a stunning visit to British skies
FOR centuries Stonehenge has brooded over the Wiltshire landscape but rarely has the ancient site appeared so mysterious as it did beneath these unearthly skies.
Colours from green to pink, from yellow to deep blue, lit up the night all over Britain, as the Northern Lights made a rare foray south, reaching as far as Cornwall and Somerset.
Cloudless skies on Sunday meant the show, known to scientists as aurora borealis, was especially spectacular. An aurora is formed by a solar flare erupting on the Sun, sending charged particles towards the Earth which interact with atoms
in our atmosphere. The fact that the aurora was seen so far south was due to the strength of the flares and the clear skies.
Mark Gibbs, of the Met Office, said Sunday evening ‘saw the coincidence of perfect conditions, making the aurora visible on the north horizon in the south of England’.
Many who spotted the bright lights showed off their photos online at the request of the Met Office. Janet Donnelly in Morayshire wrote on Twitter that the aurora had provided ‘quite a show’, while another user documented an ‘amazing display’ over Anglesey. Alex Murison said he ‘cannot believe I just witnessed the aurora borealis right outside my village in Shropshire!’, while Paul Howarth, in Cambridgeshire, wrote of the ‘incredible’ lights that he had ‘never seen it this far south before’.
Mr Gibbs of the Met Office said the particles from the Sun would have taken around two days to reach the Earth across millions of miles of space. He said some of the particles ‘enter the Earth’s upper atmosphere and excite atoms’, adding: ‘The most common sight is green, which is the result of oxygen atoms being excited. Last night we saw some reds and purples, indicative of nitrogen atoms being excited.’
There was a further chance to see the lights last night, the Met Office said, although the weather conditions were forecast to be less favourable.